Saturday, January 28

The flights to and back from Verona last week comprised a who's-who of the British custom bike world, with Mark Wilsmore from Ace Cafe rubbing shoulders with Blue from Back Street Heroes, the Battistini lads queuing next to the Sideburn magazine tweedies. Fiddy and Sharon from Davida helmets were also on the flight.

At the show, Fiddy bought some magazines from me and as we chatted I happened to mention being photographed by Davida (modelling their new helmets and goggles) at the very first Ace Cafe reunion in 1994, when the caff was still a tyre depot. I'd never seen the shots used, and wasn't surprised... I was never into the rocker look and didn't really suit Davida's nouveau-59 Club style of the time too well.

But I was amazed when Fiddy recalled the shoot from 18 years before in minute detail: "You were on an orange and black Harley with your girlfriend and we photographed you against a white wall...". Amazing, eh? Anyway, he said he still had the negs in his archive and would dig them out.

True to their word, Sharon sent me the photos this week. Weird to be confronted with yourself 18 years younger (and almost as many stone lighter). I still have that jacket... and that girl is my wife. The bike? It got nicked in London shortly after the Ace bash.

Thanks guys... so nice when someone remembers a promise made then actually follows up on it. Doesn't happen often.

One of the most interesting stands at Verona was Motortechnic MFG's from Germany.

They are making beautifully engineered replacement cases for Knuckleheads – with Panhead cases coming shortly. They also make everything from cylinders to pistons, oil pumps to heads. They are all indistinguishable from OEM (although are a tiny bit wider than stock so you can use Truett and Osborne flywheels), but are made to the most exacting standards; the guy I talked to said their parts are the very best quality available.

Tuesday, January 24

We're featuring an east coast bike on the cover of our 5th birthday issue (#25), so our good friend Walter from Kickstart Cycle is throwing a little party at Rebar in Lodi, New Jersey on Friday February 3rd.

First fifty guests will get a free copy of the new one, and there will be back issues for sale too, cheap drinks, food and a good time to be had.

Sunday, January 22

Some interesting machines and stands amongst the skull do-rags and billet barges. But you have to dig them out... This show is vast.I presented the GKM award to Christian from ChopperLab for his minimalist, dual-DellOrto S&S Panhead (bottom).

Wednesday, January 18

I hope Jeff doesn't mind me re-posting this... I've been following his FL TT build for a while now and the finished bike is beeeautiful.

Jeff Baer has appeared many times in GKM, and with good cause... he has a jaw-dropping collection of fine, original old H-Ds. We finally got to meet at the Invitational in September where he turned up in style on his 'dirty nine' Knuck.

Here's to you Jeff... thanks for building yet another bike we can feature! If you haven't already, check out Jeff's blog... you really might learn something.

Someone on FB asked for some more shots of this bike, so I thought I'd give them another airing here. They first ran in issue 3 (sold out) back in 2007.

This bike was talked about in hushed tones back in the day... before 'period correct' became the wallet-scorching Ebay trawl it is today. Steve and Bill Mize were building bikes like this back in Sioux City while everyone else was trying to work out how wide a rear tyre they could run.

Tuesday, January 17

If you remember Dave Aliventi's amazing survivor bay area Panhead we featured in issue 16, you may also remember that I saw the bike for real last year... in Tokyo. It had been sold and was being worked on by my friends at Ocean Beetle.

Anyway, Dave won't be too sad to have moved the Frisco Pan on, as he has other enviable bikes to fettle. Take a look at these: from top left, clockwise, we have a '42 Knuck, '35 Indian Chief, '36 Chief and a '53 Panhead.

Nice...

We'll be featuring that rather interesting Knucklehead in a future issue.